Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/108

 was; and this would be the Rock; valor and war, grim battle-ships, cannon, flags, the sunshine on gun-barrels, and the lively racket of rolling drums. He was tremendously eager to see Gibraltar, and he had a reason singular among his several hundred fellow-passengers. Somewhere in the little historical military cemetery he would find the name of Grogan. Hadn't the Grogans died all over Europe and Asia and Africa, from the Napoleonic wars down to the Transvaal shindy?

As soon as the salmon-tinted coast-line became monotonous, he drew away from the rail and searched the decks for his school-teacher, but could not find her. Doubtless she was preening up for the jaunt ashore.

The daughter of a man who had died in poverty—the single rift in the fog which enveloped her. I must confess that William laid sly if innocent little traps, all of which she walked around serenely. That all was not well with her he had been assured frequently. The ruminative somberness which at times overcast her countenance—at moments when she thought she was unobserved—convinced William that she was unhappy.

There were no rings on her fingers; but William knew that married women no longer wore their wedding-rings year in and year out as in his mother's day. Was she running away from something?

Once he had tiptoed around to his chair—it was at the hour when she generally dozed—to find her staring wide-eyed at a little chamois bag such as